


Exposed by Your Touch

by crazygirlne



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: And naked cuddling and talking lead places, F/M, Leonard gets exposed to a virus and Sara's his only cure basically, Naked Cuddling, Touch-Starved, cuddle or die, cuddling leads to sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 05:20:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10073870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazygirlne/pseuds/crazygirlne
Summary: When Leonard gets exposed to something that will kill him if he doesn't have skin-to-skin contact, Sara volunteers to help.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo I had a crazy long migraine and was rambling at Claudiarain and Tavyn, and I mentioned the possibility of doing this, and they majorly encouraged it and then read it over and told me it didn't suck.
> 
> They also encouraged a change from Teen to Mature, so, blame/thank them for that ;)

“Say that again,” Leonard demands, narrowing his eyes at Captain Rip Hunter as his muscles stiffen uncomfortably. 

Rip sighs. He looks at Sara, who’s standing next to Leonard, as if she'll give him some backup. When she remains silent, he speaks. “Gideon was able to remove the contagious component of the virus. Unfortunately, as much as she can do, she cannot stimulate the particular hormones needed to counteract the other effects.”

“Are you saying he's gonna die?” Sara asks, angry. 

“If he doesn't get what he needs, yes. It's reasonably simple, though. He needs human contact, skin-to-skin.” Rip pauses, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Intercourse would be the fastest way to alleviate any discomfort, but it shouldn't be necessary.”

Leonard shivers as another wave of discomfort wracks his body, this one worse than the last. 

“I have to  _ cuddle _ with someone,” he repeats, trying to make sure he's following. “Naked.”

“Yes,” Rip answers. “There are synthetic versions of the hormones, of course, but they're simply not effective enough. The virus was designed so there's no medicinal cure.”

“How long do I have?” He doesn't want to think about it, how vulnerable he'll have to make himself, how much touch is going to be required.

“The effects will start to worsen very soon, very quickly. I recommend finding someone immediately, before you're unable to talk.”

“I am  _ not  _ cuddling with  _ you, _ ” Leonard feels the need to say. 

Rip rolls his eyes. “And I'm not asking you to, Mr. Snart, but if you don't find someone, you  _ will _ die a very painful death over the course of a day, two at most.” The captain very carefully doesn't look at Sara, whose proximity Leonard is very aware of. “Perhaps Mr. Rory—”

“No,” Leonard interrupts. He glares at Rip. He knows who he needs to ask. There's only one person on board who's been able to get past his barriers, to touch him without bringing back memories he'd rather forget, and she's standing right next to him. Leonard looks at the floor, the medical chair, the closed med bay door, before finally looking over at Sara. 

She's watching him closely, her expression carefully neutral. He opens his mouth and closes it again. 

Rip sighs and leaves the room, his part finished and his presence unnecessary, but Leonard is still watching Sara. Even alone, though, the words refuse to come. 

She doesn't seem to need them, luckily, nodding after a minute or two of silence. “I'll do it,” she says quietly. “If you want me to.”

He nods without breaking eye contact, then winces as pain washes through him. Sara takes his hand and pulls him off the medical chair, and if part of him was worried Rip was pulling his leg about the method of cure, any doubt vanishes; where her hand meets his, there's no pain, and he feels something akin to euphoria. 

This is  _ not  _ his normal reaction to touch. 

It's off-putting enough that he doesn't speak, just follows her through the corridor to her quarters. 

When the door closes behind them, she lets go of his hand, and he groans as the pain—and it's definitely pain now, not discomfort—floods his system again. It makes his muscles stiff, and he's not sure how much he'll be able to move. 

“Rip wasn't exaggerating how quickly this would get worse,” he manages through a tight jaw when he sees how concerned she looks.

“We should do this, then,” she says, and she starts stripping methodically, without looking at him. 

He wishes he knew what was going through her mind. They've been close, especially since almost freezing to death, but they've never gotten naked together. 

He'd be lying if he said he hadn't thought about it, but this isn't exactly what he pictured, and he has no clue whether she feels the same. She doesn't seem to have the same hang-ups about touch as he does, but that doesn't mean she wants to get naked with someone she sees only as a teammate. 

She quickly gets down to bra and underwear, and only then does she show any signs of hesitation. 

“T- That's pro- obably ennnough.” The words are nearly impossible to force through his mouth, but that seems to help her decide. 

She pulls off the bra and slips off the panties, and Leonard really,  _ really  _ wishes he could appreciate the view. Instead, he's standing there, and it's not like he hasn't felt worse pain in his life, but it's close. It’s enough that it overwhelms any errant thoughts.

He tries to shrug the jacket off his shoulders, but his body isn't obeying his commands. Sara sees his struggle and moves toward him, helping him take off the jacket. Even though they know where this is headed, she pauses with her hands at the hem of his sweater as if asking permission. 

“I'm sorry,” she says. He doesn't know what she sees in his eyes, but she continues, peeling away layer after layer. 

His sweater goes, then his shirt, and as she pulls his undershirt off, her fingers brush against his torso, and he hisses, leaning toward her involuntarily. 

“Did I hurt you?” she asks, pausing. 

“No,” he manages. “ _ Good. _ ”

Her lips quirk up to one side, and she lets her hands touch his skin more freely as she finally takes off the undershirt. She trails her hands along his stomach, not hesitating at the scars, then unbuttons his pants. 

He closes his eyes, and the world narrows to contact, her skin against his. It's like she's setting him alight in the best way possible. 

It's not nearly enough, and despite his initial trepidation, he's relieved when she's divested both of them of all trace of clothing. She pulls him toward the bed, and it's only with her help that he's able to move that far. She sizes up the situation, and he thinks she's trying to figure out how they can have the most contact. Sara positions him so his back is against her mattress, and she keeps eye contact as she climbs atop him. She breaks it as she lowers herself to his body, her cheek on his chest, her legs tangled with his, her arms wrapped around his torso. There's almost nowhere on his front they aren't touching, and the euphoria almost outweighs the pain. 

He's able to wrap his arms around her, and he lets out a sound that couldn't possibly be a whimper but probably is. 

“Okay?” she asks. 

“Better,” he says, voice steady, and he feels her relax against him. 

“Good.”

And it is good, for several minutes, maybe half an hour. As the pain starts to fade, though, he becomes more aware of just how close they're holding each other, with nothing between them. 

“How long?” he asks. He's certainly not back to himself yet, can still feel the pain and stiffness where they can't manage touch. 

“Gideon?” Sara addresses the AI directly. “How long does Leonard need skin contact?”

“If you continue to refrain from intercourse,” Gideon answers, “Mr. Snart should be free of pain, and therefore safe, in approximately five hours.”

Shit. He's not sure he's ever maintained contact with someone for so long. 

“Just out of curiosity, Gideon,” Sara continues, and Leonard stills as she asks the question he didn't want to ask, “how long if we have sex?”

“Mr. Snart would likely recover in little over an hour if high levels of contact were maintained during sex.”

“Thanks, Gideon.” Sara falls silent.

Leonard focuses on the pleasure still coursing through his body everywhere they touch.

“Shouldn't—” His jaw is still stiff, and Sara unwinds one of her arms, bringing her hand up to cup his cheek. 

It helps. 

“We shouldn't have sex just because we don't want to have to touch,” he says. “If you can't— Five hours is a lot. I understand if I need to find somebody else.” He smirks, knowing she'll feel it under her palm. “I'm sure Palmer would volunteer.”

She laughs, shaking against him in the process, and for the first time, sex feels like something more than just a theoretical option.

“Nah, you're stuck with me until you're better,” she says. “I know Ray will be disappointed he didn't get to cuddle, but I'm not gonna share.”

Her voice is light, but there's an edge to it that makes him think she might be serious. 

“You like being here like this?” he asks, genuinely curious. 

She's quiet for a minute. “Yeah, sort of. Different circumstances would be great. But I haven't exactly had a lot of contact since… Since I died, actually.”

His grip tightens on her before he can think about it, and he forces himself to loosen his arms so he doesn't hurt her. He toys with various responses before going with his first instinct. 

“I'm happy to do my part in maintaining your emotional health,” he says dryly, and she laughs again.

“Haven't had a lot of sex, either,” she ventures, “but I never really had any desire to participate in one of those fuck-or-die clichés, so…”

“Five hours will pass soon enough,” he says. He moves his hands absently along her back as he searches for something to say, something to get his mind off sex before he makes an ass of himself. He pauses, fingers lingering on a raised scar. 

“It's where I got shot,” she says, answering his unspoken question. “There are more of them…”

He explores her back at her tacit permission, and each time he stops on a scar, she gives him its story. When he's finished, he only hesitates a moment before taking the hand she has around him and moving it to his chest. 

“Broken bottle,” he says, and she presses against it before moving to another scar she can reach without losing contact. “Belt.” They continue, and there's something cathartic about sharing this way, something more intimate than sex would be. He’s relaxing further by the minute, the pain pressing in on him less and less. 

As whatever virus leaves his system, the euphoria from contact fades, too, so he's increasingly left with just the sensation of Sara’s skin on his. 

And there's a lot of it. 

She seems to become more aware of it, too, after they've finished their exploration, shifting against him before swallowing hard. 

She starts talking about their families, at least the members who are relatively safe to discuss, and they pass more time that way, until it feels like they've always been like this, that Sara's always been in his arms and everything else has just been a dream. 

When Sara pulls back just far enough to look him in the eyes, he winces at the return of the pain, and she drops back down, holding him even closer than she was before. 

“I don't like you in pain,” she says. “Not when there's something we can do to fix it.”

“It's just a few more hours.” Leonard isn't sure why he's hesitant to ask for sex. She seems willing, and he knows he's stirred against her more than once over with past couple hours. She has to know he's not exactly opposed. 

But it's Sara. For the same reasons he is able to let her get close like this, he doesn't want to have sex with her just to solve a problem. 

“But it could be less,” she says. She wiggles against him deliberately, stilling instantly when he moves his hands to her hips to stop her. 

There's no way she can't feel how much he wants to continue, wants  _ her.  _

He clenches his jaw, trying to focus well enough to find the words. “It could be less,” he agrees, “and then I could be the person you had to fuck because he went and caught a virus made to encourage fluid exchanges.”

It's Sara's turn to consider her words; he can practically feel her thinking. “You wouldn't be,” she says. “It's not just that you're in pain.”

Leonard doesn't breathe for a long moment. Is she saying she wants this? Wants  _ him _ ? Or… 

“You said you haven't had sex in a while. Need to scratch an itch?”

Sara tenses, then exhales across his chest. “Yes, but also I like you, you ass.” She lets it sink in. “You think I'd be calmly laying here with anyone else on the ship?”

Leonard scowls, picturing her doing this with Raymond, Rip, or Kendra. He moves his hands back to her back so he can hold her close again, and it goes a long way toward erasing the unwanted images. 

She sighs against him. “It's okay. You're the one hurting. If you'd rather wait than have sex with me, that's okay.”

Does she seriously think he doesn't actively want her? Is she blaming his arousal on a basic biological response? He presses himself up against her soft skin ever-so-slightly, and her breath hitches. 

“I want you, Sara,” he says. “I just don't want to wonder why we did it. A quick screw with no strings attached would be one thing, but we both know that's not what it would be.” Not for him, at least, and probably not for her, based on what she's said in the past few minutes. 

“Okay, fine,” she says finally, the defiance in her tone at odds with her words. “We won't have sex just to make you stop hurting and get you further from _ dying _ , and we won't have sex just to blow off some steam. How about we have sex because I give a shit about you and I'm horny as hell after feeling you against me all this time?”

After turning her words over in his mind for several seconds, he releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding. 

Sara speaks again before he can. “I didn't expect you to be the one bringing up feelings.”

He hand is still against his jaw, so he knows she feels his wry smile. “Yeah, well, neither did I.”

“Is that a yes?” she asks carefully. 

“Hey, Gideon,” he says, and considering his current position and the ideas he's entertaining, he should probably be disturbed by how quickly she answers. “What about making out? Where does that fall on the making me cured spectrum?”

“Given the amount of time you and Miss Lance have spent in contact, that should cut your remaining time by approximately two-thirds.”

“What do you think, Lance?” he asks. “Wanna make out with me for an hour?”

“Are we compromising, here?” He can hear the smile in her voice. 

“Why not? This way we speed things up, and I keep my modesty intact.”

She laughs, as he hoped, then starts shifting against him, moving so she can bring her face to his without breaking contact like she had before. In the process, she rubs against him in ways that have him seriously doubting his sanity and struggling to remember why he doesn't want to sleep with her like this. 

By the time she slides her lips across his, he's desperate for the taste of her, and she doesn't disappoint. She opens to him, and he does the same, and he feels the virus continue to drain from his system. 

He's not sure how long passes this way, but when her grinding into him is too much, he flips them over and presses a thigh against her center before he realizes he was able to put some space between them without pain. 

He pulls back to look at her, and she's watching him with hooded eyes as she presses up against his leg. He can see the moment she realizes he isn't hurting. 

“There's no reason you can't be inside me right now,” she breathes. 

Without breaking eye contact, he pulls his hips back, then slides forward, slipping inside her tight warmth so easily that it's almost his undoing. He stays low, maintaining the same level of contact they've had for hours now as they find a rhythm. She skims her fingers over the skin of his back before grabbing his ass to pull him deeper. 

He complies, speeding up as much as he can without changing position, and the build is as glorious as it is slow. They take each other higher and higher until they crest, clinging together with damp skin and heavy breaths. 

He rests atop her afterward, wondering why he hasn't moved away; they've been touching each other for so long, and now that he's okay, he doesn't have to stay this way. 

Leonard does finally roll to the side, tugging her with him so that she's half on his chest. 

“We should probably do that again,” Sara murmurs. “Just to make sure.”

By the time a week has passed, they're pretty sure he's safe, but they continue to sleep together anyway. 

Just in case.

**Author's Note:**

> This was typed on my phone in a dark room. Tavyn and Claudiarain read through it, and I read it again after my head felt better, but please, if any typos made it through, let me know :)


End file.
